ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s former interior minister and senior leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Rehman Malik, has passed away, his spokesperson said in the early hours of Wednesday.
Malik was hospitalized last month with COVID-19 related complications and had since been on a ventilator.
“Deeply devastated to say that Former Interior Minister, PPP senior leader Abdul Rehman Malik passed away,” the politician’s spokesperson Riaz Ali Turi said on Twitter. “Sorrow, pain and grief are indescribable. All are requested to pray for his soul.”
Malik was born in 1951 in Sialkot, Punjab, and gained his BSc and MSc in Statistics in 1973 from the Karachi University. In 2011, Karachi University awarded him an honorary doctrate in recognition of “matchless services to the country in the war on terror and particularly in restoring peace to the citizens of Karachi.”
Before turning to politics, Malik had pursued a successful career in the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) as a special agent, eventually becoming the Additional Director General of the FIA in 1993. During his stint as director, he coordinated successful counter-terrorist operations in the country as well as abroad, including the arrest and extradition to the United States in 1995 of Ramzi Yousef, one of the main perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434.
After being removed from the directorship by PM Nawaz Sharif, Malik moved to the United Kingdom and joined the PPP.
This file photo shows Pakistan's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (L) and former Interior Minister Rehman Malik (R). (Photo courtesy: social media)
From 2004 until 2007, he served as the chief of security for ex-PM Benazir Bhutto and became a senior official of the central committee of the PPP. After successfully contesting the general elections in 2008, Malik was appointed adviser and eventually interior minister, a post on which he remained until 2013.
This undated file photo shows Pakistan’s former interior minister and senior leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Rehman Malik. (APP)
Rehman is survived by his widow and two sons.
Politicians took to Twitter to express condolences over Malik’s death.
President Dr. Arif Alavi expressed “deep sorrow” and sympathies for the Malik family.
Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed expressed “sorrow and grief.”
In 2020, American blogger Cynthia Ritchie had accused Malik of having raped her in Islamabad in 2011. He has always denied the charges and taken Ritchie to court.
